Marin Voice: Keep diversity in mind as Novato schools push to help with housing

Earlier this week, news from the Novato Unified School District caught my eye.

Marin IJ education reporter Keri Brenner wrote that NUSD announced plans to “become the first education agency in Marin to appoint a full-time staffing officer.”

The $117,024 annual salaried position outlines laudable goals stated by district trustee Ross Millerick: “providing opportunities for affordable housing that could help the district attract and retain staff.”

While on the surface, this goal may appear to be race-neutral, it may only benefit those already here if the search for candidates to fill open positions does not bring in a diverse teacher pool.

I worry that if this newly created position, as its stated consideration, was meant to incentivize teachers of color to find affordable housing in Novato, it would not have been approved.

Most Marin community leaders say diversity is essential. In theory, if that were true, then every housing decision needs to be viewed with that goal in mind.

It is my hope that increasing diversity will be one of the considerations at NUSD.

I hope people of color were in the room when this critical decision was made. If Marin is to break out of its bubble and see over the horizon to the year 2040, when it is possible the majority of its population will be people of color, we need to start planning for that day. We need to encourage everyone to get to know each other in a way which, in the long run, helps us to live together and respect the lessons people from other backgrounds have to give us.

My mother was an elementary school educator. It was all she ever wanted to be. From the time she was a child, she insisted on wearing glasses because “that’s what teachers did.”

When she left St. Petersburg, Florida and its segregated school system in 1944 and became a teacher in San Francisco’s integrated school system, she was consistently ranked as “top 10.”

So had complete respect from her students. When then-conservative ABC radio talk show host Jim Eason toured her school to find a teacher to speak about the harmful effects of busing, he looked in her classroom and saw every student’s head down, working on their lesson while she was momentarily out of the classroom.

During the hour she was on his show, former students from around the Bay Area called in to praise what she meant to them. Those who came to scoff, remained to pray.

None of my children growing up in Marin in the 1980s and ’90s had a Black teacher. Today, there are a small handful of administrators who are people of color running schools in the county.

That progress is all well and good, but it still doesn’t address the unwillingness of leadership at public institutions to make all its decisions with diversity in mind. I think we will have made progress when everyone in the room considers how this decision will impact everybody.

It may go so far as to institute a checklist. If there aren’t decision-makers present for whom diversity is a priority, there needs to be a good-faith effort to scrutinize these important decisions with that goal in mind.

Otherwise, there is, at minimum, a lost opportunity to satisfy two goals: establishing affordable housing and providing it in a way that ensures an equitable and fair future for all current Marin residents and those who would be.

Let me make this clear. I have no problem with the full-time housing officer selection made by the board: Derek Knell. He is an exemplary upstanding Novato citizen, having served on the school board from 2005 until last year.

My issue is ensuring that decisions are made with a 360-degree view. Only then do we begin to appreciate the all-inclusive society we hope to bring about, which in the long run, benefits everyone.